The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform

CHAPTER FIVE- The Politics of Health Reform: Milk

CHAPTER FIVE The Politics of Health Reform: Milk "Milk, as secreted by the healthy cow, is the purest food we know," said Health Commissioner F. A. Kraft in 1911. But, Kraft continued in his remarks during a health department campaign to improve the city's milk supply, "It is man who soils and befouls and contaminates."1 The health official well knew that much of the milk that Milwaukeeans drank harbored hidden dangers. Often the innocent-looking "lacteal fluid" contained disease-causing bacteria from a sick cow or from contamination along the route from the cow to the breakfast table. Nineteenth-century Milwaukeeans received their milk from both urban and rural cows. As the city increased in size, milk from both sources became hazardous to the health of milk drinkers. When urban land grew congested, dairy owners had no place to pasture their herds; thus they adopted the practice of keeping them penned inside barns for most of the year. Furthermore, in a city famous for its breweries, distillery slops-alcoholic waste products-provided an economical staple of the urban cow diet.2 Milk produced I The Healthologist, Milwaukee Health Department Bulletin, October, 1911, p. I. 2 A similar situation existed in New York City. For efforts of that city to deal with the problem, see Norman Shaftel, "A History of the Purification of Milk in New York or How Now Brown Cow," New York State 156 Copyrighted Material HEALTH REFORM: MILK by the slop-fed animals, who stood, slept, and gave milk in crowded stables amid their own excrement, became the late-nineteenth-century focus of the health officers' attacks on the quality of milk in the city. Rural milk was probably not too much safer than city milk. As the city expanded geographically, dairies moved farther and farther from the people whom they supplied. Although farmers did not feed their cows distillery swill exclusively and gave them the freedom of the pasture, country milk also harbored disease. Many rural cows carried and transmitted tuberculosis and other diseases to the unsuspecting drinker. Cows from the pasture returned to the barn for milking with udders and flanks soiled from the earth and their own excrement; this filth often fell into the open milk pails. Dairy employees took few precautions with their hands and clothes. Milk cans, frequently unwashed , stood unattended in the barn during milking, and then waited by the roadside for transport to the city. Wholesalers hauled the milk over dusty roads or loaded it onto unrefrigerated trains, and transporters often relieved their thirst by dipping into the milk cans.3 Both urban and rural milk thus had many opportunities to become contaminated Journal of Medicine 58 (1958): 911-928. See also Robert Hartley, An Historical Scientific and Practical Essay on Milk as an Article ofHuman Sustenance; with the Consideration of the Effects Consequent upon the Present Unnatural Methods ofProducing itfor the Supply ofLarge Cities (New York, 1842);James Flexner, "The Battle for Pure Milk in New York City" in New York Milk Commission, Is Loose Milk a Health Hazard? (New York: Health Department , 1931); and John Duffy, Public Health in New York City, I, pp. 420439 . 3 For a detailed description of the process of getting country milk to market in Milwaukee, see Peter J. Weber, "The Municipal Milk Supply," The Healthologist, October 1911, pp. 4-13. See also Charles Harrington, "The Practical Side ofthe Question of Milk Supply," Pediatrics 16 (1904): 209; George M. Kober, "Milk Sediments or Dirty Milk in Relation to Disease,"JAMA 49 (1907): 1091; andJ. Cheston Morris, ''The Milk Supply of Our Large Cities: The Extent of Adulteration and its Consequences: Methods of Prevention," Public Health: Papers and Reports 10 (1884): 246252 . 157 Copyrighted Material HEALTH REFORM: MILK Figure 18. Driver waits while customer pours milk in his own container, Milwaukee, 1900. Courtesy of Milwaukee Public Library. from warm temperatures, unsanitary handling, and human contact. Marketing procedures added to the dangers of drinking milk. Until well into the twentieth century most urbanites obtained their milk by "open dipping" from street vendors or local grocers. The loose handling of the milk provided numerous occasions for contamination to enter the milk supply. Because most consumers had no way of chilling the milk that they bought, bacteria had a further chance to flourish. Milwaukee's milk, instead of being the "purest food," undoubtedly caused many cases of tuberculosis, diphtheria, and childhood diarrheal diseases, increasing...